Presumed Dead
by ValorieJueles
Summary: Everyone thinks Luffy is dead. Hazard a guess looking at the title as to whether or not he really is. But that doesn't change that the rest of the crew thinks he is... If One Piece were mine, I'd be the pirate king. I'm not. I'm a nerd.


Presumed dead

Summery: An exploration of scenarios in which each of the Strawhats is presumed dead, and then found alive. Or maybe just a st1ory about Luffy being presumed dead and found alive.

Rating: Sanji swears like the fucking sailor he is, Savvy?

Author: Don'tTalkToStrangers

The ocean coiled inward in a vast centrifuge of power, twisting like the tentacles of the Kraken herself. A whirlpool, and yet, something far more terrifying. It was the ocean's maw, that sailors ages past said marked the end of the world, and it's water whirled out past the waves crests, into swirling spirals that caught and dragged its victims, as though they were solid, down, forever down into the abyss of green and blue. Neptune himself could ride no current out of the maze of sweeping lashing spires, and thunderous cavern below, for no current existed that did not lead to oblivion.

Nami had never heard of any treasure waiting in oblivion, so though her current chasing eyes could see the traps that lay in wait all around, she did not give the Sunny up for dead.

Zoro might be soon though, if he didn't get his ass in gear and trim that line.

Screaming orders above the sporadic wind that let them get no purchase, Nami for the first time ever, in all of memory, despaired her navigating skills. Was this all she could do? Fight her greatest enemy thusfar, her biggest challenge yet, with tricks she could see plain as day could never work?

How could she deserve to be Luffy's Navigator, if she could not rise to meet her challenges as the rest of the crew had? Her enemy was the sea!

And dammit! If these idiots could grow stronger, she could grow smarter!

But still nothing lept to her attention, no path of pure determination materialized to lead them from the clutches of the whirlpool.

A spire, at least as broad as their keel was long, lashed the mainmast, and popping cracks warned that it's breaking point was damn near met.

Franky paled at the sound, scrambling from his post at the boilers to assess the damage.

"NO!" Screamed Nami, the unreliable wind whipping her words at the cyborg as he dashed out on deck, "ABANDON YOUR POST AND WE'LL LOSE THE WHOLE SHIP!!"

Franky hesitated in his charge, and with a curt nod turned his heel and sprinted back the way he came.

Another water-whip, as thick as an airborne river hurtled toward the mast. But this time Luffy sat, his legs wrapped more times than should have been humanly possible around the stays, and he was drawing back his hands...

"DON'T TOUCH MY SHIP!" he yelled with force, as if the plume of water were a conscious enemy that he could warn away, and smashing both his hands forward in a blow that tipped the ship several feet to starboard (several feet that Nami would have to correct) he flung the offending appendage away, altering it's course till it could wobble to a stop, and resume weaving it's part in the spiderweb of it's brethren.

Nami's jaw dropped. Somehow the tentacles were solid, perhaps because it was all the better to knock the living BeJesus out of the Sunny with, but still-

And suddenly the way was staring plain as day, and it would take more daring than she might have had another day, but today the X on her arm was itching, and she knew she had to get her Nakama out of this, and this was the only way.

"LUFFY!" she ordered purpose in her voice, analyzing the patterns of the weaving currents even as she spoke, knowing where they'd be and when, "WHEN I GIVE THE SIGNAL, HIT THE WATER SPOUT I'M POINTING AT UNTIL IT'S FACING OUT OF THE WHIRLPOOL!"

"RIGHT!" answered her captain, a fierce smile that somehow rivaled the whirlpool for single-minded force and fury.

"AND FRANKY! WHEN YOU HEAR LUFFY CONNECT, I NEED A FULL POWERED COUP DE BURST, EVERYTHING WE'VE GOT, IF YOU'VE GOT COLA IN YOUR STOMACH FRIDGE, THROW THAT IN TOO!"

"WHAT ARE YOU UP TO SIS?"

"JUST DO IT!"

Nami's eyes watched the water, as the ship spun faster still, down into the whirlpool. One more revolution, and the timing would be right...

Nami drew a breath, held it, and then "CHOPPER, HARD TO PORT!"

The reindeer in his human form leaned on the wheel, and the ship swung left, dipping it's stern lower than the bow as it was sucked into the whirlpool quicker, pointing the ship up, and pulling it into the path of one of the bars of their watery cage as it swung toward the outside of the swirling hole.

"THAT ONE LUFFY! NOW!"

Luffy's palms smashed hard and true, sending the water tentacle writhing like a snake in death throes, till it faced the edge and freedom.

At almost the same moment, Franky let loose the burst of compressed air, that sent the ship, flying up on an incline, instead of it's usual horizontal movement, since the stern was lower in the whirlpool than the bow. Up the ship flew (such could only be expected of it, it belonged to the strawhats) and landed with a gelatinous glop on the re- aligned spire.

Though the not-liquid-not-solid water barely gave to their keel, it moved at a frightening pace down the length of the water column, and before it could squiggle back to it's position, the ship was yet again flung though the air and toward the open water, perfectly slipping through the swooping looping water torrents.

The Straw Hats let out a Whoop of joy (Though Usopp's tears and screams could have been construed as fear instead of happiness), only to be silenced when an angry hissing gurgling steaming sound seemed to resonate from the center of the whirlpool they were fleeing.

Nami wondered if Luffy's unconscious decision to treat it as a living thing had more justice to it than she had previously thought. She also wondered why she hadn't learned by now that Luffy's instinctive calls held more wisdom than the boy could have summoned if he thought for a week.

And as she pondered such philosophical questions as these, in a span of little more than seconds, thinner water ropes uncurled from the torrents around them, flinging out at the speed of whips, and entwining round the Sunny, halting her in mid air.

Nami lurched forward as the bindings caught, throwing her against the rail, trapping them once again. NO! NO! This couldn't be happening! She'd found her way out, conquered her enemy, she couldn't have done all that just to find her best was futile, that there had never even BEEN a way to escape! This wasn't how it ended! This wasn't the lesson she was supposed to learn!

NO NO NO NO NO! And she began furiously grasping, ripping at the rope nearest her, trying to pull the Sunny free, if it meant tearing each and every tendril off by hand, but nothing she did could break the weird durable liquid-solid.

Behind her Zoro hacked at the Sunny's chains but his cuts were too clean, and barely had his blades past through but the water-ropes flowed together again.

The Grand line had defeated her. And because of it, her nakama, every one of her nakama, would die without ever having found their dreams. Nami sunk to her knees.

"Oi! Nami!"

The aforementioned looked up to see her Captain had pulled his hat up onto his head, where it cast his eyes in shadow. Beneath the straw, the grin that reminded Nami that she served a pirate split his face. The one that made the birds jealous, for none of them had ever been as free as the moments this man saw fit to wear this grin.

How? She marveled, How could he still make that face, now, when they were bound by the very sea they sought to conquer? His heart was bound only by its own will, be it good or ill. Bring the whole ocean down on his head to restrain him, Luffy would still be free.

"Oi NAMI!" Luffy repeated, "That thing you did to get us up here" his eyes flicked from the dark center of their enemy, to her eyes for just a moment, and his smile pulled a little wider, making him look impish in the blue- light that the water cast upon the Sunny. "That was SO COOL!"

The previously still bindings on the Sunny twitched and rustled as if disturbed by the words that Luffy spoke, and pulled the Captain's attention back to staring into the abyss, as though it were his enemy's eye.

He took a breath-

"Luffy..." said Zoro, clearly understanding that something was going to happen but unable to grasp what, and positive merely by who was involved that it was a stupid idea, but he hadn't time to ask more.

"Gomu Gomu No!"

Luffy wrapped one arm around the Sunny's mast, where his legs used to be fastened, and simultaneously, as if realizing its prey were slipping away, the ropes that bound the ship began racing it toward the depths of the whirlpool. But Luffy's arm stretched up, and wrapped just once around one of the thick spires of water that they had fought before. Immediately the swift current sent his arm hurtling sideways, but still he kept his grip on the semi-solid and then-

"CATAPULT!"

The crew of the Sunny had barely realized what he meant to do, and latched onto the nearest rail when he had done it.

Luffy transferred all his weight to the speeding arm and pulled up with all his considerable might, wrenching the boat from the straining ropes that held it and flinging it mast over keel, breaking the web of swirling water with sheer force, and sending it spinning over open water and freedom.

Hardly thirty seconds later, with all the luck that Luffy seemed to have in each of his foolish ventures, the Sunny skidded violently into the water, rocking like the dickens, but miraculously keel down.

But something was wrong. Something was horribly, terribly, irrevocably wrong. Because when Nami turned to scream at her Captain for nearly sentencing them all to certain death AGAIN, there was no one there to take her punch.

"Captain-san?" perhaps the most pathetic voice she'd ever heard her good friend make, as quiet as anything Robin said, but abnormally expressive.

And slowly every eye of every Strawhat turned to see what the dark lady faced, and every eye filled with horror on the sight.

The writhing mass of water was crashing down, and the dot of red that should have been on board their ship, but had ensnared one of his too- long arm in the raging ocean to gain the leverage to get them out fell with the cage, and before they could even move for the rudder or the sails to try and save him, the sea was calm again, and not a trace left of either whirlpool, or Captain.

They rushed to where he sank, and dove down deep, first for as long as they could hold their breaths, then in Franky's submarine, but not a trace surfaced.

Near sunset, when they submerged one final time, they found a single object floating up from the depths.

A very worn straw hat.


End file.
